For those who'd rather ponder, investigate, research, make a point, construct an argument, and then get angry...

Thursday, December 07, 2006

KG, JB and Me...

Me, the wife, Crazy Neighbor Lady, and Mr. and Mrs. Bob the Builder went and caught the illustrious Tenacious D at the Gwinnett Civic Center the other night. First off, the opening comedian was awesome! I didn’t get his name, but he came out in a tux and Chuck Taylors and rattled off 30 minutes of perfectly awful jokes: “Why is it okay to take a piss on Courtney Love? Cause she’s never apologized for the Arab/Israeli conflict…” Fuckin’ brilliant.

TBS has been running ‘School of Rock’ in heavy rotation and I’ve watched it a couple of times. One thing you get from watching it, High Fidelity, and seeing a D show is that these guys are HUGE ENORMOUS fans of rock and roll. Every note they sing, every chord they play, every pose they strike they’ve ganked from some record or show they’ve seen/listened to since being brought into this world. I would imagine that at some point in their early lives they knew their body types weren’t amongst those which make for super stardom (something I can relate to) especially in the genre of music they love so much, but that certainly didn’t seem to discourage them. They simply love playing rock & roll and discovered like many of have that whatever is really good anyway has everything to do with how it sounds. And let’s make this one thing perfectly clear from the jumpstreet: These two fuckers can play, especially KG!!!

Last night the D were in rare form. This was the last show of the tour and they pulled out all the stops. While not quite a sell out, it was pretty damn close. From the minute the lights went down, to the closing crash of the encore EVERYBODY in the house was on their feet. Most in the crowd sang every lyric. I chose not to partake in my normal pre-show listening routine since I wanted the comedy to be fresh and assure myself a good laugh.

As the show opens, the curtain parts to Kyle Gass and Jack Black sleeping under a blanket on a typical shitty bachelor pad couch in their most accurately depicted apartment, at least what we'd all imagine it would be. The set was complete with keg in the corner, microwave oven and a Ronnie James Dio ‘Holy Diver’ poster on the wall. The two slacker dressed companions jammed a number of tunes on their always present acoustic guitars to the delight of us all.

At one point in the middle of the show, Kyle threatens to go electric which somehow dispatches them on a journey to hell where they meet the anti-Christ, (“Wow, I didn’t know Christ played a mean guitar! I’m not Christ, I’m the anti-Christ…”) who introduces them to Charlie Chaplin who’s serving an eternity in hell for being gay and also happens to play a mean bass guitar. For the rest of the show, The D jam with this most awesome band in front of this amazing ‘Hell’ stage set complete with eight foot tall drum riser and colossal four bass drum kit.

It was truly an amazing show. If you get the opportunity in the future, go check them out. It’s definitely worth the price of admission.

P.S. I just heard Spinal Tap’s ‘Gimme Some Money’ over a TV ad for American Express…

2 Comments:

The comedian who opened was Earl Hamburger. Most of his material was lame - or brilliant depending on how you look at it. I was especially offending at his joke saying Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side Of The Moon' sucked. But his Colonel Sanders joke was hysterical and far too foul to repeat here.

The "D" totally rocked! And the encore, which included a medley of The Who songs from 'Tommy' was phenomenal! Although, at the time I had to wonder if the young kids in the crowd even knew they where Who songs and not Tenacious D's own stuff.